


over red rocks

by carnivorousBelvedere



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Heavy aesthetic, Internalized Homophobia, Loneliness, M/M, Mystery, Repression, Sheriff - Freeform, Small Towns, Sonora Desert, Who is Karkat?, bad fake names, love letter to arizona
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-07-24 18:13:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnivorousBelvedere/pseuds/carnivorousBelvedere
Summary: It’s 1981.Dave Strider leads a simple life as Sheriff of Corsocova, a small town in rural Arizona.Then one day a stranger comes to town, and everything Dave thought he ever knew changes.(titled changed from 'the sheriff and the stranger')





	1. Genesis

No one is meant to live out here.

Even with the unique proximity to the lake, Corsocova, Arizona lives an arid existence, a small town found dotting the unique expanse of the Sonoran desert. Found maybe fifty miles above the Mexico border, it fields a few tourists when the busy season peaks, but for the most part it’s just the people that live there. The people, the dry heat, the lake, the cacti, the coyotes, and the red rock mountains in the distance. 

Jimmy Hopkins runs the liquor store. Sometimes the kids like to come after school to buy sugary drinks, and he has to keep a wary eye on them. Ms. Layla Daniels is one of the young schoolteachers. Lorna and Sam run the aptly named Lorna and Sam’s Diner, which sells more apple pie that anything else. Ryan Hepsburn operates the gas station. Mr. and Mrs. Beckham manage the small motel. Will Walters owns the one bar. 

They all know each other, and all of them know Sheriff Dave Strider.

The people of the town love Sheriff Dave. Ever since he’d come there, he’d made a point to get to know everyone, gaining their trust despite being a stranger. It didn’t take long for the displaced Texan to work his way into the hearts of the Corsocova citizens. 

He loved this city and they loved him, and the sheriff was determined to keep it that way. 

-

“Evenin’ Gibbs, Morrison,” Dave nods to two off-duty workmen seated in a corner of the bar as he passes by. The two men give him a wave before returning to their conversation. 

He slides up the bar, taking a seat at the very end and nodding to Walters, who was busy wiping down the counter. 

“Strider! You hang tight, I’ll be with you in a minute. The usual?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, the usual,” Dave says, nodding as he gets on the stool and places his hat on the bar surface while keeping his sunglasses on, a quirk the townspeople had become accustomed to. Dave rubs at his eyes while he waits, eyes and skin dry after a day of patrolling. He realizes he didn’t shave a small bit on his neck this morning as he runs his hands down his face. He’ll have to fix that tomorrow. 

Dave’s always been the same to these people, day in and day out. The khaki uniform, blonde hair parted to the side, sideburns, worn cowboy boots (not standard dress but no one’s really checking), all topped with the wide-brim hat and aviator style sunglasses. This is the carefully maintained impression he gives his citizens. 

In a minute Walters places a beer in front of him with a smile. 

“Just put it on the station tab,” Dave says. 

“Nah, this one’s on the house,” the bartender grins, waving a hand.

Dave peers at him. “... Alrighty then, if you’re sure.” 

“Hey you deserve it, Sheriff.”

“I’m off the clock, Will. It’s just Dave.”

The bartender laughs. “Everyone knows you’re always on the clock. But alright, if you insist, Dave.”

Dave smiles and lifts his drink in a small toast to the bartender before taking a long sip as Williams busies himself with barkeeping. He makes small talk with him as he works. 

“Where’s Elkhorn? Or the other ones?”

“Oh, Mimi wanted him home for dinner tonight. Made lasagna, family recipe. You know how it is. Everyone else is home tonight, or watchin’ the station. I have my eyes everywhere, you know.”

“Ah, so it’s just you tonight.”

“Yeah, just me.” He sighs, more pensively than he had really meant, but busies himself with watching the fuzzy TV in the corner replaying a football game instead of saying anything else. 

People filter in and out over the next hour, almost everyone saying hello to him. Dave watches the usual men come in to shoot the shit after work, and mostly keeps an eye to make sure no kids trickle in hoping to sneak a taste of alcohol. None of them would dare cross him, though. He also trusts Walters to pay attention. 

Eventually he finishes his beer and heads outside, making note of four men dismounting motorcycles right outside the bar. He nods at them before shoving his hands in his pockets and tilting his head down as he hurries away, not wishing to interact with such a crowd, not alone and not today. It’s not until he passes the diner on the way to his car that he looks up. A couple of older women sitting outside in the cooling dusk grin at him as he walks by.

“Hello, Sheriff!” One of them calls.

“Good evening, ladies,” he says, tipping his hat as he passes. He hears them giggle behind him.

“Oh my, that man is so _handsome_ ,” one of them says, not really bothering to be quiet.

Dave turns around and finger guns at her. "Now now, you could do better than a scoundrel like me, Ms. Langer," he says before pivoting back around. The women break out into swooning laughter behind him. Grinning to himself, he continues on to his car parked on the side of the road, half in the sandy gravel that generally makes up most of the town’s earth. The old Crown Vic starts with a jolt and he rolls the windows down so the warm exterior can equalize with the nighttime air.

His radio stays on, always prepared for something to get called in, even as he drives home for the night. 

When he gets back to his quiet adobe home on the periphery of town he pounds a couple glasses of water with a frozen TV dinner and when he’s done with that, he does a quick workout with a pull-up bar. It’s not much, just enough to keep him in shape not so that he’s intimidating, but mostly so that people wouldn’t want to mess with him. 

He does have a reputation to keep, and he won’t ever be seen on the job growing a beer gut like his Chief Deputy. 

Dave soon showers and gets in bed, quickly fading into sleep so he can do it all over again the next day. 

For over six years now, Corsocova’s most desirable bachelor has done the same thing, every single day, ever since he got there. 

In the morning Dave shaves and dons his uniform, eating some eggs on top of buttered toast with black coffee before riding out to the station. His boots crunch against the rocky sand as he walks out to his car, just starting to warm as the sun comes over the distant red mountains. 

It’s always nice to come to an empty base, seeing that no one has ended up in drunk tank while he was ‘off duty’. His other officers sometimes drag people in if they’ve been rowdy. It’s not typically locals save for one or two men going through a rough time at home now and then. Usually the tourist season drags in small crowds, whether it’s just traveling families or underagers going to drink below the border. The Hell’s Angels roll through occasionally too, and that’s something that always gets Dave’s hair standing on end. He doesn’t want them bringing their business down south to their town, even though some of it inevitably ends up passing through. Remembering that he’d seen them last night, he makes a mental note to ask Walters about any shady behavior if he ends up returning to the bar later. 

He seats himself back in his office and waits for Elkhorn to get there so they can get on with not doing anything, it really is too early for anything all that significant to be happening in town except for the omelettes at Lorna and Sam’s. He only leaves his home so early because he lives pretty far out of town, anyways. 

He busies himself with reading an old newspaper before Elkhorn finally shoves through the doors, letting some of that vital air conditioning out. 

“Morning,” he booms.

Dave likes Vince Elkhorn, his Chief Deputy. He looks exactly like you’d expect someone working in law enforcement to look like; he has a round stomach and a salt and pepper half-handlebar mustache with matching eyebrows. He’s a pretty jolly guy, and a typical member of the American nuclear family. One of his kids moved to Nevada, the other was planning to come back to be a banker at the new bank, whenever it finished getting settled. He’s a good guy, means well, but he’d been getting on Dave’s nerves lately. 

“Elkhorn, you’re late,” Dave drawls. 

Vince laughs. “Good one. Anything new?”

“No-pe,” Dave says, obnoxiously popping the ‘p’. “We can go make sure people aren’t speeding on Garland when school starts if it gets too dull.” It’s a good look for their department. 

“Or maybe you just want to go say hi to that nice Ms. Layla Daniels,” Elkhorn teases. 

Dave rolls his eyes. It’s too early for that, even though he totally stepped in it bringing up the school. He can feel his face getting hot as a result, but not because he’d been correctly called out on his attraction to the schoolteacher, though. 

In fact, the accusation couldn’t be further from the truth. Dave looked on her kindly, and they were friendly, but it did not go any further than that. For Dave, at least. 

But to the rest of the town, Dave and Layla were playing the sweetest game of hard-to-get, dancing around each other day after day. Surely any moment now, Sheriff Strider would get down on one knee for the sweet teacher with auburn hair and stars in her eyes for the town’s protector. 

Elkhorn wouldn’t let it go, and Dave’s ability to bat his excuses away was growing thin. He’d watched Dave turn down her many platters of cookies and offers for dinner. Dave would always cite, ‘But what would the people say?’ And Elkhorn would grumble something about _someone_ making the first move. 

Though no one else beside his partner had said anything, he could see the invisible hourglass of their expectations, slowly running out of time. 

It’s nearly 8 am when Elkhorn announces it. “I want a slice of pie from Sam and Lorna’s.”

“Fine,” Dave says. He can get coffee. Then they’ll go patrol, same as always. 

They head out to his car. The grade school is on the way, so they stop outside and watch kids get dropped off. Dave notices out of the corner of his eye a woman coming towards them. He quickly determines that it’s Layla, waving and smiling at him hopefully. She comes over to the window and he keeps his face impassive as he rolls it down so she can say hi.

“Chief Deputy Sheriff Elkhorn,” she nods to him in the passenger seat with a smile when she leans down before looking directly at Dave and very meaningfully saying “Sheriff Strider.” 

Dave nods at her, pursing his lips. “Good morning, Layla,” he says, and she beams at him. 

“How’s it going today? Busy keeping all of our town safe?”

Dave shrugs and looks forward before looking back at her. “You know it.” 

“Like you always are.” She folds her arms in front of her chest nervously as she squats down to talk into the window. Glancing down at the floor, she worries her bottom lip between her teeth before looking at up at him. “You know I was thinking I might be free later if you wanted to come over for dinner. You’ve been working so many hours lately, Dave. I think it would be nice, you deserve it.”

Elkhorn is smiling madly at him but Dave ignores him. He shakes his head. “Sadly I’ll be putting in a few late hours tonight, you know how it is. ‘Busy keeping all of our town safe’.”

Her smile falters but she nods anyways. “Ah, right. Well alrighty then, there’s always next time. You two uh, you two should go along ahead, I think we got this under control here.” She steps away from the car. 

Dave pulls away from the curve, pointedly ignoring Vince’s gaze. “What?” He spits after a few long moments.

“Nothin’!” Vince says. “I’m just sayin’--”

“Oh, can it. You know how this town’s rumor mill goes. I go over to that sweet lady’s house and they’ll have my head.”

“That woman is positively head over heels for you. I keep telling you, you’re the town’s most wanted bachelor, she’s the most desired bachelorette, it’s a match made in heaven.”

Dave just frowns and drives on. Vince drops it, but Dave knows that it’s temporary. 

He doesn’t bring it up again until they’re sitting in front of apple pie slices with steaming cups of coffee, Elkhorn flipping through a newspaper while Dave taps his pen over a crossword puzzle

“You know some people are sayin’ you don’t wanna date her because you’re queer.” He says it so casually, right over his coffee cup before taking a sip.

Dave freezes. His face grows dark and stormy as the seconds wear on, the word burrowing under his skin like it was made of a thousand tiny arrows. He glances around furtively to make sure no one is all that nearby before leaning forward and angrily whispering at Elkhorn, “After all I’ve done for this town, you accuse me of being one of those _abominations_?” 

Elkhorn glances at him. “Hey now, I didn’t say you were. Just that people talk. You’re almost thirty, for goodness sake! And even if you-“ 

Dave frowns and cuts him off. “Listen, I don’t wanna--”

“Settle? I know I know I’ve heard it. Mimi and I just want you to be happy, and I’m just watching out for you is all. ”

“I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, Chief Deputy.”

Elkhorn laughs dryly. “Yeah whatever you say, Strider. Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t pull all-nighters just because there was a homicide two towns over.”

Dave sighs and refocuses on the crossword. “Just tell me if you know what the ‘crab horoscope’ is.”

“Oh, that I do. Cancer,” Elkhorn says. “That one’s Cancer.”

“Thanks,” Dave sighs as he pens it in, relieved that Vince is letting them drop the subject, even if temporarily. 

But the word keeps echoing through his skull.

 _Queer_. 

-

_“All y’all boys think lil Davey’s a bit queer, huh? Well, we’ll show him what happens to little boys who think it’s okay to stare at men.”_

-

Dave wakes up in the middle of the night and groans when his bedside clock reads three in the morning. Sweating and disoriented from the dream, he hauls himself to his feet and stalks to the kitchen for some cold water. 

As the dream fades away after knocking back a glass, he stands at the sliding glass door and gazes at the vibrant stars over the dark landscape. 

It’s weak moments like this when Dave feels profoundly lonely.

He is so lonely, aching to be touched, an ache so deep he can feel it in his bones. 

Eventually, he falls back to sleep, but only after he convinces himself that he doesn’t need anyone to be happy here. 

He has the desert and people that need him.

-

Dave turns down the offer to go to the bar with his officers.

Today there’s clouds in the sky, giant streaks that he already know will light up with impossible pinks and oranges at sunset, and he knows he can’t miss it. 

He hikes up to the mountaintop by his home, far out on the edge of city limits, and drinks water while he watches the sun disappear on the horizon. 

Everything around him under the whole entire great dome of the sky, like the limbed cacti making strange shadows on the sand, the plain brown rocks surrounding him, it’s all lit up purple and orange and red in the setting sun. 

_There can’t be anywhere on Earth near as beautiful as this,_ he thinks. 

Night has fallen by the time he gets to the bottom of the hill. 

He sees it out of the corner of his eye, a grand streak of light emitting from the stars. He quickly turns to face it, only to see it fizzle out and… hit the ground somewhere in his desert. A meteor?

He jogs back home and races to his radio, looking out the sliding door at the expanse where the object must have fallen. 

“Elkhorn, did you see that?”

A fuzzy voice responds a few seconds later. “Copy. The thing in the sky? We saw it. You want me to go check it out? I don’t think it caused a fire but doesn’t hurt to check this time of year.”

“Nah… You go ahead, stay in with Mimi. You both deserve it.”

Elkhorn laughs and Dave can hear the gratitude in his voice. “You’re the best, Strider. I’ll send her your regards.”

“Please do, Vince. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.” 

The radio quiets. Dave sighs and sets down the receiver, glancing in the direction of his bedroom. He’ll need to put his uniform back on if he’s going out on business, but he doesn’t plan to see anyone so he can leave his glasses in his pocket. Otherwise it will be impossible to see out there, especially in the waning moon. 

Soon he’s in his car, driving out further into the desert wilderness, far away from any paved roads. Out here the landscape is heavily covered with all the Sonoran has to offer- tall saguaros all the way down to ankle-high shrubs. 

He follows the one dusty road out to the desert. The only thing he can hear are the nighttime crickets, even as his engine makes a racket tumbling over the sand and flora. Moths fly into the beam of his headlamps and plants scratch the sides of his car as driveable path ends. He keeps the windows rolled down, listening and looking for anything that might spell trouble for his grounds. 

Eventually he sees it, something smoking? It looks like the fumes off a small campsite fire pit. It’s the only other light out here, besides his car. 

He swerves to avoid a saguaro and pulls over seeing as he’s just about reached the end and he’ll have to proceed on foot. He sighs and gets out of his car, brandishing a flashlight. Moths fly in front of the beam, illuminated for only a second as they move erratically. 

Out here the sound of his boots on the sand feels particularly loud. He starts moving, hopeful that he didn’t accidentally park over a red ant hole, or worse, near a rattlesnake. He waves the light over the landscape, seeing nothing save for the red dirt and green plants in the lights direct path and that distant smoke. 

Dave sets his shoulders and starts marching out to it. 

Something howls farther out, and he swears he hears the coo of an owl. Something shuffles in the brush, probably a startled jackrabbit. 

He can't help but feel fondness for them all, wishing he could see it in the daylight. 

The smoke is in front of him sooner than he realizes. He shines his light into the pit that is suddenly at his feet, and before his eyes can register what’s before his feet, darkness leaps up and swallows him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, we meet Karkat. Or do we?


	2. Dust Bowl

Dave wakes up with the sun hitting his face, laying on his back in the sand. He blinks, his eyes crusty and face uncomfortably covered in a small layer of dust. Coughing once, twice, he sits up and forces his eyes open to examine his situation. 

What just happened? There’s no pit to be seen. He must have fainted. Or been attacked by something? The sunlight is already too bright so he pats himself down until he finds his glasses and slips them on. His eyes are still unbearably dry but at least he can see now and figure out what the hell happened to him. 

What the hell did happen to him? He tries not to feel so shaken up, but he can’t help it. After determining he didn’t pass out on an ant pile, an miracle of insane proportions because they are everywhere, he stands up and brushes himself off. 

Where is his flashlight? And better yet, where is his car? 

Thirst is hitting him as the air begins to heat up. He spins around himself, looking for his abandoned car. 

The air is shimmering but he thinks he might see the lone vehicle, and it looks like it might be a mile away…but he couldn’t have possibly gone that far last night. He shakes his head and starts toward it. He can’t waste time, not without water and the sun steadily rising. 

By the time he gets back to his car he’s dangerously parched. Swallowing against his scratching throat, he throws the car into drive and speeds out the way he came. In the daylight navigating is so much easier. 

He’s going to be late for work.

Not that it matters that much to anyone but himself, really. He considers calling in sick, something he hasn’t done in a long while, but that just feelings like quitting. He’s not that messed up over it.

Keeping his dry eyes open is a struggle on the drive back. When he gets home he drinks as much water as he can before jumping in the shower to quickly wash the dust off that had accumulated over his apparent rest in the desert. 

What he fuck happened to him last night? 

He hasn’t even had any coffee but he feels _restless_. It’s like there is something under his skin, aching to do… something. He can’t put his finger on it. 

After dressing in his uniform he heads out to the station, air steadily warming outside. 

Officer Rice is on duty when he gets in. 

“Hey, anything come in overnight?”

The officer looks sleepily over the desk. “Someone called in something going on outside but it was just coyotes making a racket.”

“Who was it?”

“I think you can guess.”

“Karen Reeves?”

“Yessir.”

Dave laughs a little. “Typical. Alright. When are you off?”

She looks at the clock. “Well, I actually think I was already supposed to be off but then you didn’t show.”

Shit. “You go on ahead home, I’ll rearrange your schedule so you don’t have another weekend night shift for a while.”

“Thanks Sheriff, you’re a real one,” she says, getting up and heading to go gather her belongings before heading home.

“I try,” Dave says softly as she walks away. He puts his hands in his pockets and goes back to his office, unsure of why he feels so antsy. It’s like he wants to jump out of his skin. Maybe today would be a good day for walking around town on foot, granted it doesn’t get too terribly hot and he doesn’t forget water again. He still feels pretty dehydrated from his desert nap, though.

Something ends up weighing on his chest the rest of the day until he goes home. 

We he starts relaxing from the day he stands shirtless in his kitchen, looking out at the desert as the sun sets. 

It was an ache. He was aching for something. He brushed a hand down his chest, as if he could make the pain of it go away himself. 

He wanted to be touched, plain and simple, and it had been so long since he’d touched someone with more than a handshake.

It had been even longer since he’d laid with someone.

He grips the edges of his sink as the fever starts to burn. If he didn’t take care of this one he’d be waking up mid-dream later that night, rutting against his bed and dreaming of— 

_Not other men._

But he would be. No matter how long he avoided thinking about it, he would be. 

Why couldn’t he be like everyone else? Why couldn’t he find the idea of settling down with a woman appealing? 

Why was it that he would sit there fantasizing about sitting across from another man, smirking at him and drinking whiskey and brushing their fingers together? 

The clarity of the daydream is strong enough to knock him over. He leans over the sink and splashes water onto his face. It does nothing. 

He was in love with something that wasn’t real. Something that he could never have, because it was _wrong_. 

He could do this. He was stronger than this. It has been years by himself, he could handle it.

But it sure felt like he was getting even weaker, year by year. 

It feels like something is lashing out in the periphery of his vision. 

He must just be pent up. With a grunt he goes over to the pull-up bar, surely he can work some of this tension out. 

He doesn’t get that far, because he blacks out again. 

But it’s not the same blackout in the desert, he’s still conscious, but it feels like he’s floating up and out of his body, and everything is dimmed or shrouded in a dark cloud. 

Then he realizes he _is_ the dark cloud. He’s floating, he’s not touching the ground. His thinking mind blanks out, and something reaches from his body and pushes the sliding door open… from several feet away. 

It’s like a black tendril extending from his body.

Everything blanks out completely, and once again he wakes up on his couch in a sweat. 

It’s dark out and the moon is high. He left his sliding door open. With a groan he pushes himself to sitting so he can stand, cross the room and shut it. He can’t even begin to imagine how many bugs he’s let in. 

His microwave clock reads a little after three AM. What the hell just happened to him? Why does he keep fainting? The out of body experience had been so strange, too. He considers for a second going to see the town doc, but maybe he just was a bit lightheaded from the earlier dehydration and was seeing things. All of these had easy explanations. 

It’s frustrating getting to to his bed and laying over the covers, already feeling the itch working it’s way up again. 

It’s only a few moments later that he’s hard, gritting his teeth and palming his erection. 

Finally he gives in to the fantasy of a dark, fall and handsome stranger pressed up against his body, and it’s not long before Dave comes with a cry no one will ever hear. 

-

It’s another boring week day. The heat is oppressive, and it only starts cooling off late in the afternoon. There is nothing going on. Vince is doing the new weekly newspaper crossword and tapping his pencil against the table, the only sound in the station besides the hard-working air conditioning. 

When Dave gets the call, he doesn’t believe what he’s hearing. 

Someone apparently wandered in drunk from the desert and was roaming the streets, speaking gibberish and being a general public disturbance, more or less. 

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to go see this one for myself,” Dave says, slapping the table as he stands. 

“Need any back-up?” His partner offers.

“By all means,” Dave sighs. “If you’re comfortable, stay in.” Drunk people weren’t that irregular nor all that interesting either. 

“You got it boss,” his partner says with a weak salute, turning back to his newspaper. 

Dave laughs a little to himself but goes ahead into the heat. He gets in his car and heads for the main stretch of town where the diner and bar are, but doesn’t see the reported man. Continuing on, he approaches the tiny strip mall with the general store, and that’s when he sees him. 

The reported visitor has dark skin and dark hair and he’s not short but not tall and Dave’s jaw drops when his eyes land on him.

He’s beautiful. He’s so beautiful it’s almost inhuman. 

It’s almost like a figure from Dave’s dream standing in front of him...

If his dream happened to be stumbling around, unable to hold himself up because he was so drunk, that is. As he is now he’s lurching and staggering step by step across the roadside gravel. Dave shakes himself out of the daydream and pulls the car over in front of his path, setting his jaw as he steps out of his cruiser and puts a hand out.

“Hello sir, it seems you’re a bit intoxicated,” Dave says, and the words feel so forced in the hearing range of this gorgeous human, who definitely can’t be that much older than himself.

The man stills and looks at Dave, his stance slipping as he teeters to the side and back before coming to a stop in front of him. “我正在寻找负责人,” he says. 

“I’m sorry?” Dave says, squinting at him from behind his glasses. “I’m afraid I’m gonna need you to speak up.” The man really is babbling like he’s lost his mind, which would be a shame for someone so visually appealing. 

“我 说 我 需 要 跟 谁 负 责 人 说 话!” He yells. 

Dave is somewhat taken aback. “Sir, I cannot understand you. I’m gonna need you to start speaking something that sounds a bit more like English or uh... we’re gonna have a problem here?”

The man takes a few more staggering steps toward him, but pauses to stare at Dave’s face “English? Oh thank fuck…” He’s right in front of Dave now. “The other one had…. So many letters.” 

He faints right into Dave’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation- “I need to speak to someone in authority here”
> 
> Any theories? :))


	3. Sleepwalk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ended up changing the title /shrug

“Elkhorn, a little help please,” he says, one arm around the stranger as he dragging him along.

“Oh, sweet jesus,” the man says, shoving up to standing and running to Dave’s side. He loops an arm around the unconscious man and helps Dave carry him in. 

Dave nods in the direction of the drunk tank.

It’s not actually the drunk tank, there’s only two cells in the station. It’s called that because 95% of the time, it’s just a drunk person they end up putting in there. 

With a bit of help they set him on the cell bench and straighten themselves. 

“What the hell happened here?” His partner questions. 

Dave huffs as he gazes down at their transient detainee. He still looks beautiful, god fucking dammit. “Not sure. He was acting pretty… inebriated, when I found him. He passed out right then and there.”

Vince glances at Dave. “He passed out?”

Dave doesn’t take his eyes off him. “Right in the dirt.” It’s an easy lie that rolls off his tongue. He doesn’t think anyone will get involved to corroborate the story.

“You didn’t just leave him?”

“Come on, I’m the sheriff not a heartless bastard.” 

Elkhorn laughs once and shakes his head. “Well, that’s fine then. Guess someone’ll have to keep an eye for when he wakes up.”

“Yeah,” Dave says thoughtfully. “Guess we will.” 

Someone will need to get his ID when he wakes, right? 

That person ends up being Dave himself. He sends everyone home, avoiding the questions and saying that everyone deserves the night off, and then just sits there at the desk across from the cell, feet on the desk and dozing. It’s well after nightfall, Dave is almost never here even this late. 

Noise from the cell wakes him. He sits up and watches as the man groans from the bench. 

“Fuck, my head,” he groans. 

Dave swallows thickly. Yeah, this guy had been acting like a degenerate but his attractiveness is really distracting from that point. He doesn’t even know what to say, and he’s handled situations exactly like this hundreds of times. 

Just… never with anyone who looked like this. 

But still, he stands and stalks over to the bars to look at the sobering prisoner. “Good morning,” he drawls through a suddenly dry throat. “How’re you feeling? I bet that hangover you’ve got right now hurts like a mother.” Even in the daylight with messy hair, Dave can only stare and think about how attractive he is- shiny dark hair, tan smooth skin he wants to touch, angry eyes that look ethereally hazel.

The man rolls his head to look at him. Dave can see him squinting. “Fuck you, what the fuck even is this place.” 

“You were acting drunk. Drunkard, meet drunk tank.” 

“Drunk… drunk… oh, intoxicated,” the man says, as if he couldn’t remember the word. “No! I wasn’t, why don’t you try and schoolfeed yourself five languages and see how it treats you.” 

Dave pauses. “Schoolfeed?” The stranger sure is sprouting some nonsense, hopefully he isn’t still feeling the sauce. He certainly has a particular accent, he sounds almost like someone Dave would hear on TV. He clears his throat and continues. “Never mind. Well, since we didn’t find any identification on you, literally nothing, I can’t let you go unless we get some of your info. Any chance you lost your wallet on your bender there?”

The man groans. “I wasn’t drunk! I just need to talk to whoever is in charge around here.”

“Listen, man,” Dave says, shuffling his stance as he looks down at the floor and back up, putting his hands on his waist. “The ‘person in charge’ around here happens to be me, and if you want to make a complaint you are far too late. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want to arrest you for resisting presenting documentation. But all this fuss makes me wonder if there’s a warrant out there for your sweet mug.”

Whoops, he shouldn’t have said that. 

“That’s ridiculous. This planet is ridiculous. I don’t know who you are or who put you in charge, but your pathetic city’s inhabitants and existing species here will die unless I find what I’m looking for.” 

Dave stares at him. As attractive as he is, the words coming out of his mouth are undeniably getting weirder and weirder. “And just what are you looking for?”

The man pauses. “I… I can’t tell you.” 

Dave makes an exaggerated sigh. “Well then it seems I can’t help you. If you’re not gonna tell me who you are or where you can from or what you want, I’m gonna start have to make some tough decisions, starting with this: I think you need to leave town, and don’t make me make you.”

“And what if I decide to stay?”

Dave laughs. “Well sir, I hope you find your identification and maybe lay off the booze for a few.” 

-

Dave ends up letting him go. There’s no real reason to keep him. 

Somehow, he has a strange feeling it won’t be the last he’ll see of him, and that doesn’t really bother Dave like it should. 

Dave knows his heart shouldn’t _flutter_ at the prospect of another visit from him. He was a drunkard, possibly delusional. 

A handsome delusional drunkard, then. 

_So what? He’s just some person._

But it bites at Dave. Just what had he been on about? Had it just been nonsense, was he just crazy? 

Later that night, he wakes up in a fever sweat, struggling to recall the receding wisps of his dreams where he touched a dark, handsome man. 

-

The doors to the station fly open and in stomps the nameless man, sounding huffy. Dave hears the commotion of him, the rough, husky voice he remembers from yesterday, conversing with his employee outside. He stands up from his desk and exits out to the front lobby, hands on his hips. 

The stranger and his other officer stop mid-sentence to look at him.

“Can I help you?” Dave sighs. 

The man turns and stalks over to Dave, and Dave can see him full on now.

He’s wearing different clothes and he looks even better sobered up. His hair doesn’t look as wild, just sexily tossled like he’d been running his fingers through it. 

Dave is thankful for his sunglasses because he knows he won’t be able to keep his eyes off him.

“You and I need to talk,” he says.

Dave points at himself, purposeful mock disbelief. “Me, you say?” 

The man growls. “Yeah, you, asshole. Unfortunately everyone tells me if shit is happening around here you’re the one to talk to. So fine, I’ll tell you what I’m looking for.”

Dave crosses his arms. “A’ight. I’m waiting.”

His officer sits back down and continues on with the crossword they’d been working on. 

The man scrunches up his lips in annoyance far too adorably. “Okay, fine. What I’m looking for is extremely dangerous. It will kill people. That’s all I can tell you… because, uh, my mission is classified.” 

Dave stares at him for a long moment and then opens up his mouth to laugh. He uncrosses and recrosses his arms as he does. “Alright, that’s some serious bullshit if I ever heard it.” Wow, this man really has lost his mind. 

He should also find something other to mentally call him than ‘the man’ or ‘the stranger’. 

“There are lives on the line here! I need to know if anything weird has happened around and everyone says you would know.” 

Dave shakes his head. He really should stop humoring this man’s delusions. “What do you want to do then, ride around with one of my deputies? There’s nothing going on around here. Corsocova is a small, safe city. Nothing happens here.” 

He scoffs. “They aren’t the people who would know, so no, it has to be you. And I know it’s here. I know it’s in this town. There was a huge surge of energy here the other night, it bonded to an organic life form and any moment now it will start killing people. Maybe it’s already started and you just don’t know it yet.”

This leaves Dave speechless for a moment. 

He _is_ crazy. 

“... Listen,” Dave finally says, when he manages to find words again, choosing them carefully. “You show up in my town, throw your weight around about some apparently dangerous nonsense, and frankly I don’t like it very much.” The man scowls as Dave steps toward him. “Sir, I honestly think you’re gonna need to leave.” 

“Goddamit, of course you don’t believe me. You will regret it if you don’t listen to what I’m telling you!” 

Dave laughs again and the man narrows his eyes at him. 

“The fuck is your problem?” He challenges, stepping towards Dave. 

“Just the fact that you’re so seriously coming in here with all this, and it’s just a bit hard to believe. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it’s hard not to.”

“Wow, the one person who should be concerned can’t even do his own job, very nice.”

Dave feels a spike of aggravation and suddenly he can feel it on the periphery of his vision, a shadow lashing out, except still not really there at all. He sucks in a breath and blinks rapidly. 

The man had apparently been speaking to him. “Anyone there? Hello, can you human with a puny brain not understand me? I would tell you the truth but you couldn’t possibly handle it. Your brain would decompose immediately and fall out of your ear holes.”

Dave shakes his head, snapping back to awareness. “You need to leave,” he says coldly. 

The stranger sneers at him, turns around and heads out. 

Dave stands there staring at the doors where he disappeared for several seconds. 

“What the hell was that?” The officer at the front desk asks. 

Dave sighs, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he says. “Absolutely nothing.” 

-

When the stranger returns the next day, Dave is even at the station. The request for his presence is radioed in, and he stops in the middle of aimless patrolling to go back before this man causes any more issues or says any more bizarre things to his officers.

The man stands up in the waiting area as soon as Dave walks in. 

“Well?” He says, pausing before where the visitor is standing. 

“Can we talk somewhere? Privately?” The stranger asks somewhat pleadingly, his eyes shifting towards the officer at the front desk and back to Dave.

Dave sighs heavily, his shoulders falling to show his frustration. The man is looking at him with such desperately imploring eyes, and he can’t say no. 

“Fine, but this is the last time I humor this whole… flight of fancy you’ve got going on,” Dave says, waving a hand in the man’s general direction before turning to the hallway leading back into the station. “Come on, there’s a meeting room back here.”

The man follows him. Dave leads him to their staff meeting place, which is rarely used, and waits to let him in before closing the door and turning to face him. 

“Will you work with me if I tell you my name?” The stranger says. 

_Hell no_ , is what Dave should say.

“I’ll consider it,” is what he actually says, tilting his head forward slightly. 

“Okay. Fine. My name is,” he says, hesitating, “Carson Van… Thomas.” 

Dave exhales. “Alright, that is the fakest name I’ve ever heard.” He shakes his head. “Listen, unless you’re willing to tell me a bit more about who you are and where you came from and what you’re looking for, I really can’t help you.”

The man _Carson_ or whatever, steps toward him, and Dave wishes he wasn’t already pressed up against the door so he could step back. “I can’t do that,” he growls. 

“Well then get the fuck out.”

“Do you care at all? Do you even have any idea what’s at stake here?”

Dave frowns, eyes narrowing at him. “I said _get the fuck out_.”

“Yeah well you sure aren’t moving to let me!” Carson snaps, and then Dave watches as he does something very particular and even more familiar, something he’s seen Layla do to him a few hundred times. His face turns to disgusted rage. 

“Were you just looking at my lips, you fucking queer?”

Carson scoffs. “And so what if I did?” 

“That’s disgusting, get out you freak,” Dave snaps, turning to put his hand on the doorknob so he can show the man out. 

Carson speaks before Dave opens the door, and what he says gives him pause.

“Wait, you mean to tell me that’s also not normal here? I could have sworn—“ 

Dave interrupts him. “To look at another guy’s mouth? Yeah that’s pretty fucking gay, that’s only shit you do if you wanna get your ass beat.”

The man actually laughs. “Really? That’s what gets people messed up on this pl- here?”

Dave is about to snap at him again to leave but then he realizes the discrepancy. “Wait, you don’t, uh, for you you don’t? That’s not bad? Where you’re from?” He knows he’s not really making sense, but Carson seems to follow, even if he appears bewildered by the sudden turn in Dave’s demeanor.

“Uh, no? It’s not? Why would it be bad?”

Dave takes his hand off the door handle and lowers his voice, turning back to Carson. “Why won’t you tell me where you’re from?” 

“Why do you want to know so bad?”

Dave considers bullshitting and saying that it’s because of this weird case Carson seems to have for Dave, but the words don’t come out. The truth comes out, along with the rest of the fight Dave had in him as his shoulders drop. “Because maybe I want to know that there’s somewhere where that isn’t… bad.” 

Carson just stares at him, his eyes blinking once, twice, before he speaks again. “I can’t believe you can just _vacillate_ like that,” me murmurs, almost as if he didn’t know he was saying it. 

“Vacillate? I get I was a little upset for a bit there but you caught me off guard in my defense.”

He groans. “Are you going to help me or not? Because as much as I don’t mind letting your pathetic citizens eventually die out I’m sure you do.”

Maybe Dave should take his threats of something dangerous looming seriously. Maybe he should take Carson on and help him. Maybe he would learn where he’s from finally. He’s still reeling that Carson doesn’t seem repulsed by the idea of being with another man. 

“I… I can’t help you, I’m sorry. There’s nothing out there.”

-

Something is wrong with Dave. 

He wakes up, burning with dreams about _him_ , his mouth dry and abdomen warm. His body is buzzing with energy, almost as if his entire being is vibrating

As he walks to the kitchen for some water, as he always does, he realizes he isn’t walking.

He’s floating. 

_I’m dreaming._

Even in the night, everything is coated in a dark filter, and he notices in the periphery of his vision those strange limbs lashing about.

He looks down, sees the tile of his home, and his feet aren’t touching the ground. He’s held up something. 

His breathing quickens, he starts to panic, and the darkness rolls into him, breaking down his conscious awareness of the situation. 

Something is wrong. 

The darkness swallows him.

He wakes up on his cold tile of his kitchen floor, sunlight beginning to filter through part of the window. 

Christ, what the hell happened to him last night? 

He remembers walking, no, flying out here, but that wasn’t real, was it? That was a dream, right? He pulls himself to his feet groggily and starts up the coffee maker with a groan. 

Then it’s there again, a flickering in the periphery of his vision, there but not there. 

He can almost see it if he looks, but then it’s not there. 

Dave reaches for it within. 

The darkness overtakes him immediately, his feet leave the ground. He extends one hand out, but instead a dark tendril like black smoke whips out in front of him, and everything goes away as Dave fades out again.


End file.
